User Experience Design – California Digital Libraryhttps://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo
The Official CDL BlogFri, 14 Dec 2018 18:07:53 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.1Help us improve the CDL website!https://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2017/07/11/help-us-improve-the-cdl-website/
Tue, 11 Jul 2017 21:31:32 +0000http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/?p=20881More...]]>The California Digital Library’s UX Design Service is gearing up to redesign cdlib.org and we want to learn about how you use the website: What works great, what doesn’t work, and what we can do to make it better.

CDL is happy to announce that John Kratz has joined the User Experience Design team as a full-time career UX designer.

In case you weren’t aware of John’s history here at CDL and his many contributions and project work prior to joining the UX team. Here is a little background refresher.

John Kratz initially came to the CDL in 2013 as a CLIR/DLF Postdoctoral Fellow in Data Curation for the Sciences and Social Sciences. His background is in scientific research, and he holds a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Columbia University, where he used nematode worms to study the genetics and neurobiology of the sense of touch. As a Postdoc in UC3, he investigated issues surrounding research data publication for projects like a data metrics pilot, Making Data Count. Since his start at CDL, John has created UX designs for a number of CDL projects, such as Dash (UC3’s researcher-facing data publication service), eScholarship and DMPTool. We look forward to his continued contributions to the UX team and to CDL.

Robert Wang is a new UX Designer at the California Digital Library (CDL). He recently graduated from the University of Michigan with an M.S. in Information, specializing in human-computer interaction (HCI). He is excited about advancing CDL’s mission of supporting scholarship and providing public service. His portfolio can be found at wang-ux.com.

In 2014, he completed his internship at the Ford Motor Company’s Research and Advanced Engineering Center in Dearborn, Michigan, working on the Smart Mobility team. While at Ford, he built an internal tool that supports executive reviews.

Prior to Ford, Robert worked as part of a team of user experience researchers for Consumers Energy, where he recommended improvements for an overhaul of their website by conducting interviews, surveys, heuristic evaluations, comparative analyses, and usability tests.

He is also proud to have served as product manager for droptime, an innovative mobile note-taking app for the busy bee. He conducted user interviews, defined the functions and features, and drew the product wireframes. See https://dropti.me.

Robert has spent 25 years living in the Bay Area, where he went to middle school, high school, and college. He went to college at UC Berkeley, where he graduated with B.A. in Political Science. While at Berkeley, he attended a lecture by Alan Cooper, which later helped inspired him pursue a career in HCI.

When Robert is not glued to his computer monitor, he enjoys reading, practicing yoga, traveling, and spending time outdoors. He is excited to be part of the East Bay community, where he hopes to spend more time in Alameda, Napa, Oakland, San Francisco, and Yosemite National Park.

Alana is a content strategist interested in the intersections between information, design, and discovery. Originally an aspiring film archivist, she completed her undergraduate degree in Film Studies at Mills College in Oakland, before heading east to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn where she earned her MLIS with an emphasis in museum libraries and archives. There, she developed a deep love and appreciation for metadata and taxonomies, and how they can be used to create better user experiences both in and outside of libraries.

While in New York, Alana contributed to a number of archival projects at various museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Historical Society, and the Museum of the Moving Image. Most recently, Alana worked as a content strategist at a digital agency in Brooklyn where she helped research, define, and implement content solutions for clients ranging from e-commerce to entertainment, including Comcast, Apple, Zumba, and The Simpsons World. Alana is excited to be returning to her MLIS roots at CDL and to be around others who are equally enthused about beautifully organized information.

Alana’s primary responsibility will be to manage and maintain the CDL website’s content. She will also be working on content related projects for our services here at CDL.

]]>CDL Job Opening for UX Designerhttps://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2015/08/28/cdl-job-opening-for-ux-designer/
Fri, 28 Aug 2015 20:32:57 +0000http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/?p=18148More...]]>Do you get intrigued thinking through system interactions and engaging in the details of a useful and arresting user experience for online websites and resources? Then join our team! We are hiring a person to join the UX team and serve as the User Experience (UX) Designer for the California Digital Library (CDL). Responsibilities include creating and communicating highly functional and usable designs, as well as executing and analyzing user assessments for an array of CDL services and projects.

]]>CDL Job Opening for User Experience (UX) Content Strategisthttps://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2015/02/26/cdl-job-opening-for-user-experience-ux-content-strategist/
Thu, 26 Feb 2015 19:18:13 +0000http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/?p=17064More...]]>Do you love creating an engaging and useful content strategy and user experience for online websites and resources? Then join our team! We are hiring a person to serve as the User Experience (UX) Content Strategist for the California Digital Library (CDL). Responsibilities include developing and overseeing an overall content strategy for the primary CDL website, designing and configuring complex material to utilize digital communication resources to their full potential, as well as designing and evaluating the UX for an array of CDL services and projects.

CDL is pleased to announce that Joel Hagedorn has joined the CDL as the newest member of the Web Production team. Joel comes to us from UC Berkeley Extension where he previously worked as a web developer. He also held web developer positions at the UCB School of Public Health and Chabot College.

Joel received a Bachelor of Science in Instructional Technology at California State University, Chico, and a Certificate in Internet Design and Technology from the San Francisco State University Multimedia Studies Program.

Joel will be working closely with Craig Thompson and Eric Satzman as well as members of the User Experience (UX) team in supporting the various user interface needs of the CDL. When Joel isn’t building web sites, he is interested in travel, the outdoors and photography.

Please join us in welcoming Joel to the CDL!

]]>CDL Webinars for Users Council – And you!https://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2013/05/09/cdl-webinars-for-users-council-and-you/
Thu, 09 May 2013 21:23:13 +0000http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/?p=13540More...]]>Here’s an excellent and easy opportunity to broaden your knowledge of some of the projects CDL and the campuses are working on.

CDL recently hosted a webinar series for Users Council that’s now widely available to UC staff. (The CDL’s Users Council is a group responsible for communicating information between the CDL and the campuses concerning use of CDL tools, services and collections. Users Council consists of a liaison from each UC campus, including LBNL, LLNL and the Regional Library Facilities. A CDL representative is an ex officio member. )

The topics covered were chosen through a member survey, with survey expertise provided by CDL’s Senior Assessment Analyst Jane Lee.

This year there were six lively sessions covering the following ground:

We’re nearing the end of our last few months in the project timeline. In the last update, we had anticipated a December, 2012 release; however, due to unforeseen project and resource demands we have had to re-assess our timeline and are now targeting an end of February, 2013 release.

What has been completed in the last quarter of 2012.

All content has been migrated from old site to new site. All told some 1,000+ new HTML pages were created and entered into the CMS. 2,000+ non-HTML documents were migrated and metadata was assigned to each document so that our new search functionality could be optimized.

New search functionality was created.

We mastered a new CMS and learned all the ins and outs of bringing over old content into a new system.

Tested the CMS and are making changes according to the test findings so that our content contributors can have as good a user experience as our website users.

]]>Librarian in Print – Rachael Huhttps://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2012/10/31/librarian-in-print-rachael-hu/
Wed, 31 Oct 2012 20:22:54 +0000http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/?p=12428More...]]>CDL’s Rachael Hu has an article published in this month’s RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage (Fall 2012 13:175-190). The article is entitled, “Methods to Tame the Madness: A Practitioner’s Guide to User Assessment Techniques for Online Finding Aid and Website Design.” It discusses a variety of assessment tools to use in the world of online finding aids, including those in OAC. Congratulations, Rachael!
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